I kind of agree with the criticism this episode gets from some fans. Homer’s stupidity was way too exaggerated but my biggest complaint is for the people that were too indulgent with him, forgiving Homer for his crazy antics. It was heavily handled from the beginning to the end without any variation. I understand the concept of the episode and somehow like it, but the writing wasn’t very good for me. I don’t consider it a bad episode, but far from the best ones.

this episode was a revelation for me for other reasons – I saw myself in Frank Grimes and it really affected me. I was angry at the world and angry at other people for their successes that I felt they didn’t deserve.
And seeing Grimey made me realize that I wasn’t coming across as someone to sympathize with, but rather as a bitter, angry crank.

I get the criticism but I always saw this as a weird but hilarious one-off meta episode. Sort of a “what if” scenario where a Springfield outsider calls Homer out on his gross incompetence and dumb luck. I love how the response is an apathetic, “What are you gonna do?” and a “That’s our Homer!”. Homer’s stupidity seemed exaggerated for comical effect especially when you compare it to the rest of the episodes in the eighth season.

If we only knew in 1997 that this was the beginning of the end of The Simpsons. Nowadays Homer in Homer’s Enemy is relatively smart and still likable compared to borderline mentally retarded jerk ass Homer we have now.

[QUOTE]I always saw this as a weird but hilarious one-off meta episode. Sort of a “what if” scenario where a Springfield outsider calls Homer out on his gross incompetence and dumb luck. I love how the response is an apathetic, “What are you gonna do?” and a “That’s our Homer!”. Homer’s stupidity seemed exaggerated for comical effect especially when you compare it to the rest of the episodes in the eighth season. [/QUOTE]

I believe the writers on the DVD commentary for this episode pretty much see the episode the way you see it.

[QUOTE]If we only knew in 1997 that this was the beginning of the end of The Simpsons.[/QUOTE]

I always thought the beginning of the end of The Simpsons was the episode where Roger Meyers comes up with Poochie the dog and Homer voices him and everyone hates the new character (and yet, no one says anything about Roy suddenly living with The SImpsons, but I guess that’s part of the joke). Everything about that episode revealed that the Simpsons writers and staff are a bunch of assholes who don’t care about their fans and their fans are worse. Bart and Lisa frowning at the TV and saying, “What else is on?” was clearly the writers’ way of saying, “Find something else to watch if you hate us so much! We don’t care.”

Plus, that episode was the 167th, meaning it beat The Flintstones as the longest-running animated primetime TV program.

I don’t think Homer was an asshole in this one. I mean even if you consider him acting a little off, arrogant and jerkass would be the last thing to describe his actions. Grimes, instead, freaks out because Homer isn’t exactly a model employee and then, for some reason, it gets personal. All Homer wanted was friendship.
Compare that to the episode where he’s rivaling George H. W. Bush. There, he’s anything but friendly and well-determined, all because the ex-president spanked his son. Once. Those are two over the top extremes, but seriously Grimes came out of fucking nowhere, wasn’t exactly voiced by a celebrity, and died for nothing. He wasn’t remembered either and only one more episode ensued during the Zombie years: his son wanting revenge. Overall, Grimes was a douchebag and fuck him.

Surprisingly I agree. Homer was more or less the Flanders to Frank Grime’s Homer. Homer literally goes out of his was to be nice to Grimes. Yeah he accidentally eats Frank’s lunch and uses his pencils but he goes out of way to make up for it. Homer also seems genuinely sad when Grimes rejects his friendship. Hell Homer even tries to warn Grimes when he goes to grab the live wires.
If inviting a co-worker to your home for a lobster dinner makes you an asshole than I wish I knew a lot more assholes.

I don’t think anybody is saying “Homer’s Enemy”‘s Homer is in full Jerkass mode, because HE ISN’T. But it’s a weird episode where Homer is, for some reason, interested on being friends with one coworker, to the point of inviting him to his house. Real Homer would never, ever done that, real Homer would have either ignored him or went to Moe’s. But suddenly, we have this proto-Jerkass Homer that is extremely dumb (he talks to a photo of Lenny), and energetic (he builds a miniature of SNPP for a kids’ contest), and even worse, proud of his life (remember the Homer that preferred to eat crap rather than talk to George Harrison, or he tried to give away his Grammy because he missed his family? This is another Homer). And, unlike seven and a half seasons before, this Homer isn’t stopped by anybody.

“Homer’s Enemy”, like “Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie”, was an attempt to make some meta-commentaries about the show and/or its impact on our world. But both episodes suffers from the same problems, named: their plots doesn’t make sense, they have too much horns of suspense, they doesn’t wrap themselves up in a satisfactory way, both end with killing the new character, both features this proto-Jerkass Homer who is for some unknown reason the center of the plot, no character attempts to stop Homer, etc. The Simpsons did several meta-commentaries in the past (what about Marge asking for I&S to be banned?) and they didn’ resort to putting Homer on. every. single. scene.

Granted, you mention “Two Bad Neightbors”, which is an episode I have several struggles with (poor, apologetic usage of Lisa, too much fist fight, missed oportunities like Flanders or Quimby or Burns), but at least that episode has a plot which makes more sense: Homer disliked Bush from minute zero, but didn’t went crazy until he spanked Bart.

Yeah, there’s also the aspect of Homer having virtually no consequences for being a dumbass which is in sharp contrast to what normally happens to him (being stuck as a middle-class, hard luck slob). It was one of those early zombie episodes where Homer’s character had to be changed to make the plot work

I could have worked if this episode was a rare exception to the usual formula, but the show suddenly made this Homer’s permanent character (except more of an douche later on).

The only true “Jerkass” moment was loudly snoring during his funeral, but otherwise he was more zombie than jerkass–a term that would find much more usage in the Scully Era.

Then again, this was a problem with much of Season 8, so it doesn’t seem as out of place in retrospect.

Oh, and it was also one of the first in which he was in full retard mode without any other character (aside from Grimes) noticing it and treating him like a regular guy (which is kinda along the same lines of “no consequences”). He was essentially becoming a proto-Peter Griffin.

That was the joke! I didn’t realize there was so much animosity about two episodes I love so much. Did you guys hate 22 Short Films about Springfield, 138th Episode Spectacular, and Spin-off Showcase too for being silly meta episodes?

It’s not about episodes having a strong meta-focused plot, or being silly. It’s about episodes breaking characterizationfor dangerous reasons.

See “Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie”. Here, Homer is completely incapable of punishing Bart, which is a huge departure from the Homer of the first two seasons who was much more angry and unforgiving towards Lisa and Bart. But that departure had sense in Season 4 (when the characters finally evolved from their original forms) and it led to harmless, funny as hell scenes.

You are also ignoring that, on Season 4 and 7, the Homer-centric/ Bart-centric/ both or neither-centric ratio for each Season was stable and well distributed, but in Season 8 Homer had much more relevance overall, while the amount of stories that were focused on Bart shrank. That led to Season 10 being nearly about Homer getting new (stupid) jobs.

I didn’t “hate” these episodes, I just think that in some cases my personal point of view and my opinion of their way of showing things differ. “Homer’s Enemy” implied that Homer could be a selfish jerk to anyone, and it’s funny because he didn’t care about that dead guy. I think that Grimes acted like a jerk instead, it got personal because we were supposed to feel sorry for Grimes, but I failed to since the very first time I saw it.
And there are many examples where I completely disagree with a given episode’s outcome. But I still prefer a show that I could disagree with, rather than feel like I’m sitting next to a retard and suppose to take their jokes seriously.

Still fail to see how snorting at a funeral makes you a “jerkass” only because you were really sleepy. It’s not like he did it on purpose, and totally unlike anything Peter Griffin does nowadays (including treating Meg like shit on purpose – BTW are they still onto that trope?).

Jerkass Homer is not just about Homer being an asshole and an evil doppengarder of his classic self. Jerkass Homer is also about Homer being the Simpsonized Poochie, where every single scene and story must feature him, or where nobody can stop him, or where he can do everything and go away with it because he’s a cartoon character.

If he is the center of a show but he isn’t treated like he is some sort of a superhuman star, then no.

Which is the reason why nobody hated “Deep Space Homer” or “Homer’s Barbershop Quarter”, for example. Yes, both episodes features Homer in places he didn’t were before, but he was the same lovable father and husband he was in any other episode.

Whereas in Season 8, Homer slowly but steadly became a superstar.

Just in Season 8 we have:
-Homer becominga boxer and fighting against Drederick Tatum in an emotionally heavy handed episode
-Homer becoming best friends (?) with a complete stranger (??) who is very bad at social skills and charisma (???) and also happenedto be Burns’ son (????) and Homer himself helps rebuild their relationship (?????) by a phony kidnapping (?????????)
-Homer rebuildingthe Flanders house
-Homer being the voice of Poochie
-Homer becomingthe only provider of alcohol on a dry Springfield and skipping the authorities’ control
-Homer finding his soul mate or whatever, space coyote batman alucinating-inducing chilli
-Homer being crazy about Marge leaving him, on a episode which started being about the freaking Van Houters’ divorce, Milhouse and Bart

This is like Season 7 and its love for slightly clumsy emotional, touching moments and breaking the established Springfield mythology on every single episode. There are, simply put, too many Homer centric episodes in Season 8.

Had “Homer’s Enemy” being made a mere season before, Homer’s sudden change would have been more forgiving and plausible (and also better done). But in Season 8, where the show was already collapsing, “Homer’s Enemy” is the coup d’ grace. The last thing The Simpsonsneeded was Homer stealing every plot and scene.

Which is what I was talking about on my previous post. “Itchy & Scratchy & Marge” (I don’t rememberthe correct name of the episode) had very few scenes with Homer, and it didn’t require weird steps of logic. “Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie” only required Homer being too weak against Bart, but that’s just a little weirder than Homer becomingFlanders’ friend or him being suddenly interestedon clown-related things. “Homer’s Enemy”, on the other hand, requires a Homer and a Springfield that is completely different from anything we have seen before, and that’s a typical setup for Jerkass Homer.

Okay, I see what you mean. Funny enough, I don’t have a problem with any of what you mention. So he’s the center of the show. It’s not like these episodes have theoretically no plot whatsoever, and only exposition/celebrity cameo/filler keep things together. I don’t have that problem with “Two Bad Neighbors” either (even though it aired “one year earlier”) because it features Homer going nuts over Bush spanking Bart (we’re talking about the same Homer who secretly wishes Bart was someone else’s problem – just a thought). The difference is: both he and H. W. go over what could be qualified a regular neighbor feud (comedy ensues), while he and Grimes seem to not get along well ONLY and SOLELY because of Grimes being a douchebag. And yes, I do have a problem with that. But like I mentioned elsewhere, I accept the show building a different opinion from mine, because at least it does build something (or tries to).
In a nutshell, having too many Homer-centered episodes is bad, but having episodes that feature Homer because they have to shoehorn in a celebrity is far, far worse. IMO

My friend Sam, a Russian Jew, from the USSR, told.me how as a kid he enjoyed watching early Simpsons (and throwing homemade 1oz explosives into the woods with other kids) the other day and it reminded me that every episode like this caused my brain to almost explode from the writers smoking too much dope.

In the most recent episode “Friend With Benefit,” I thought the new character Mike had some potential in that he was this loud, wacky, impatient, destructive guy not unlike (zombie) Homer personality-wise, but he was inexplicably a billionaire who owned everything imaginable. They might have been able to do sort of a reversal or sequel of “Homer’s Enemy” (“Homer’s Friend”?) with that, with the conflict coming from Homer’s reaction to this new guy who has basically the same traits as himself being much more successful for no good reason. But the way the episode actually played out, we’ll probably never see Mike again.

Arthur Fortune didn’t really have anything in common with Homer, he was just a more popular billionaire for Mr. Burns to become jealous of. Speaking of “Monty Can’t Buy Me Love,” I’ve long considered this episode in trying to decide when the “real Simpsons” canon ends for me. The ending with the Loch Ness Monster was probably the least realistic thing the show had ever done at that point, and I didn’t like it.

No, but Arthur Fortune was pretty much the alter-ego of Burns, and it plays out on the same level (even with that absurd ending you mention). The whole episode is Burns trying to be like Fortune/meddling with Fortune’s plans when he can’t. Just saying that they’ve used this plot a tad differently in many of their episodes. Even “Lisa’s Rival” is one.

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